Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 81, Tuesday 29 July 2025

Gnasher and Gnipper in the ‘Beano’ always seemed ready to gnash their teeth

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church and this week began with the Sixth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity VI, 27 July 2025). The Church Calendar today (29 July 2025) remembers Mary, Martha and Lazarus, Companions of our Lord. Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

Harvest or weeds? … a field near Cross in Hand on the northern edges of Lichfield last week (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Matthew 13: 36-43 (NRSVA):

36 Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, ‘Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.’ 37 He answered, ‘The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; 38 the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, 39 and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. 40 Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. 41 The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, 42 and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!’

Fields of green and gold beside Comberford Hall, between Lichfield and Tamworth in rural Staffordshire last week (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

This morning’s reflection:

In my imagination, when I was a child, not only were the summers long and sunny, but weekend entertainment was simpler and less complicated. The highlights of the weekend seemed to be Dr Who and Dixon of Dock Green, and the weekly editions of the Eagle and the Beano.

I may have been just a little too old (16) for the first appearance of Gnasher (1968), the pet dog of Dennis the Menace in the Beano. The G- tagged onto the beginning of the name of both Gnasher and his son Gnipper is pronounced silently, just like the silent P at the beginning of Psmith, the Rupert Psmith in so many PG Wodehouse novels.

Most of the Beano speech bubbles for both Gnasher and Gnipper consist of normal English words beginning with the letter ‘N’ with a silent ‘G’ added to the beginning, as in ‘Gnight, Gnight.’

I was a little too old for the introduction of Gnasher, but nonetheless I and my friends in our late teens and early 20s loved Gnasher and Gniper, joked about those silent ‘Gs’ and even recalled how as children we had joked about ‘weeping and G-nashing of teeth.’

There is very little to joke about in today’s Gospel reading (Matthew 13: 36-43). The idea of people being thrown into the furnace of fire is not a very appealing image for children, and so to joke about it is a childhood method of coping.

But throughout history, humanity has stooped to burn what we dislike and what we want to expunge, and we have done it constantly.

We have been burning books as Christians since Saint Athanasius ordered the burning of texts in Alexandria in the year 367. In the Middle Ages, and sometimes even later, we burned heretics at the stake. When that stopped, we burned anything deemed to be an occasions of sin.

They were burned publicly as an accompanying theme for the outdoor sermons of San Bernardino da Siena in the early 15th century. These included mirrors, cosmetics, fine dresses, playing cards … even musical instruments, and, of course, books, song sheets, artworks, paintings and sculpture. In his sermons, the book-burning friar regularly called for Jews and gays to be either isolated from society or eliminated from the human community.

Later in Florence, the supporters of Savonarola collected and publicly burned thousands of objects, including cosmetics, art, and books in 1497.

On the other hand, Franz Kafka’s last request to his friend Max Brod in 1921 was to ‘burn all my diaries, letters, manuscripts … completely and unread'.

But, more recently, the Nazis staged regular book burnings, especially burning books by Jewish writers, including Thomas Mann, Karl Marx and Albert Einstein. Extremists of all religious and political persuasions want to burn the symbols and totems of their opponents, whether it is Pastor Terry Jones burning the Quran and effigies of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama in Florida or jihadists burning the Twin Towers in New York.

Today we are witnessing efforts by the Trump regime to suppress free speech by journalists in the Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press, capriciously excluding journalists from the White House press pool, and threatening to strip NBC and ABC of their licenses to broadcast. The hypocricy of these threats is aggravated by claims from the Trump regime that it was defending free speech when it attacked Britain and other Euopean countries for seeking to curb violence and racism on US-based social media platforms.

The limits of our extremists seem to be defined by their inflammatory words.

But who is being burned in this morning’s Gospel reading?

Who is doing the burning?

And who will be weeping and gnashing their teeth?

Contrary to many shoddy reading of this Gospel reading, Christians are not asked to burn anyone or anything at all. And, if we have enemies, we are called not to burn them but to love them.

Christ has been speaking by the lake first to the crowd, telling them the parable of the wheat and the weeds (verse 24-30). The word that we have traditionally translated as tares or weeds (verses 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 36, 38, 40) is the Greek word ζιζάνια (zizania), a type of wild rice grass, although Saint Matthew is probably referring to a type of darnel or noxious weed. It looks like wheat until the plants mature and the ears open, and the seeds are a strong soporific poison.

Christ then withdraws into a house, and has a private conversation with the Disciples (verses 36-43), in which he explains he is the sower (verse 37), the good seed is not the Word, but the Children of the Kingdom (verse 38), the weeds are the ‘Children of the Evil One’ (verse 38), and the field is the world (verse 38).

The harvest is not gathered by the disciples or the children of the kingdom, but by angels sent by the Son of Man (verses 39, 41). It is an apocalyptic image, describing poetically and dramatically a future cataclysm, and not an image to describe what should be happening today. It is imagery that draws on the apocalyptic images in the Book of Daniel, where the three young men who are faithful to God are tried in the fires of the furnace, yet come out alive, stronger and firmer in their faith (see Daniel 3: 1-10).

The slaves or δοῦλοι (douloi), the people who want to separate the darnel from the wheat (verse 27-28), are the disciples: Saint Paul introduces himself in his letters with phrases like Παῦλος δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ (Paul, a doulos, slave, or servant of Jesus Christ), (see Romans 1: 1, Philippians 1: 1, Titus 1: 1), and the same word is used by James (see James 1: 1), Peter (see II Peter 1: 1) and Jude (see Jude 1) to introduce themselves in their letters.

In the Book of Revelation, this word is used to describe the Disciples and the Church (see Revelation 1: 1; 22: 3).

In other words, the Apostolic writers see themselves as slaves in the field, working at Christ’s command in the world.

This is one of eight parables about the last judgment found only in Saint Matthew’s Gospel, and six of the seven New Testament uses of the phrase ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’ (ὁ κλαυθμὸς καὶ ὁ βρυγμὸς τῶν ὀδόντων) occur in this Gospel (Matthew 8: 12; 13: 42; 13: 50; 22: 13; 24: 51; and 25: 30; see also Luke 13: 28).

When it comes to explaining the parable to the disciples in today’s reading (verses 36-43), the earlier references to the slaves in the first part (verses 27-28) are no longer there. It is not that the slaves have disappeared – Christ is speaking directly to those who would want to uproot the tares but who would find themselves uprooting the wheat too.

The weeding of the field is God’s job, not ours. The reapers, not the slaves, will gather in both the weeds and the wheat, the weeds first and then the wheat (verse 30).

Farmers are baling the hay and taking in the harvest in many places already. In a few weeks’ time, many farmers will be seen burning off the stubble on their fields to prepare the soil for autumn sowing and the planting of new crops. In this sense, the farmer understands burning as purification and preparation – it is not as harsh as city dwellers think.

It is not for us to decide who is in and who is out in Christ’s field, in the kingdom of God. That is Christ’s task alone.

Christ gently cautions the Disciples against rash decisions about who is in and who is out. Gently, he lets them see that the tares are not damaging the growth of the wheat, they just grow alongside it and amidst it.

But so often we decide to assume God’s role. We do it constantly in society, and we do it constantly in the Church, deciding who should be in and who should be out.

The harvest comes at the end of time, not now, and I should not hasten it even if the reapers seem to tarry.

The weeds we identify and want to uproot may turn out to be wheat, what we presume to be wheat because it looks like us may turn out to be weeds.

We assume the role of the reapers every time we decide we would be better off without someone in our society or in the Church because we disagree with them about issues like sexuality, women bishops and priests, and other issues that we mistake for core values.

The core values, as Christ himself explains, again and again, are loving God and loving others.

It is not without good reason that the Patristic writers warn that schism is worse than heresy (see Saint John Chrysostom, Patrologia Græca, vol. lxii, col. 87, On Ephesians, Homily 11, §5). We do not need to demythologise this morning’s reading. Christ leaves that to the future. This morning we are called to grow and not to worry about the tares. That growth must always emphasise love first.

When some members of the Church have sought to ‘out’ or ‘throw out’ people because of their sexuality they have caused immense personal tragedy for individuals and their families and friends – weeping and gnashing of teeth indeed.

When I want a Church or society that looks like me, I eventually end up living on a desert island or as a member of a sect of one – and there I might just find out too how unhappy I am with myself!

But if I allow myself to grow in faith and trust and love with others, I may, I just may, to my surprise, find that they too are wheat rather than weeds, and hopefullu they may realise the same about me.

‘The field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom’ (Matthew 13: 38) … harvest fields last week in Fisherwick, between Lichfield and Tamworth (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 29 July 2025):

The theme this week (27 to 2 August) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Reunited at Last’. This theme was introduced yesterday with a programme update from Raja Moses, Programme Coordinator, Diocese of Durgapur, Church of North India.

The USPG prayer diary today (Tuesday 29 July 2025) invites us to pray:

Loving Father, we lift up all survivors of trafficking who have suffered fear, abuse and trauma. Bring healing, restore their dignity, and give hope for the future.

The Collect:

God our Father,
whose Son enjoyed the love of his friends,
Mary, Martha and Lazarus,
in learning, argument and hospitality:
may we so rejoice in your love
that the world may come to know
the depths of your wisdom, the wonder of your compassion,
and your power to bring life out of death;
through the merits of Jesus Christ,
our friend and brother,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post Communion Prayer:

Father,
from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name,
your servants Mary, Martha and Lazarus revealed your goodness
in a life of tranquillity and service:
grant that we who have gathered in faith around this table
may like them know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge
and be filled with all your fullness;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Franz Kafka’s last wishes … a video in last year’s exhibition, ‘Kafka: Making of an Icon’, in the Weston Library in Oxford (Patrick Comerford)

Yesterday’s reflections

Continued tomorrow

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Two churches in Belfast illustrate the story of the decline and survival of Presbyterian church life

Great Victoria Street Presbyterian Church, Belfast, was built as Sandy Row Presbyterian Church in (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

Great Victoria Street was once an elegant and fashionable street in Victorian Belfast, leading from College Square at the north end, to Shaftesbury Square at the south end, and lined with landmark buildings including Belfast Central Station, the Grand Opera House and the Crown Bar, which I discussed in a blog posting on Saturday (21 September 2024).

Great Victoria Street – like so many other streets in Belfast – at one time was also home to a number of churches and places of worship, including Great Victoria Street Baptist Church on the east side and Great Victoria Street Synagogue on the west side.

During our recent year visit to Belfast, I walked along the street a few times, between Botanic Aven where we staying and the city centre. On those walkabouts, some of the buildings I stopped to see, out of architectural interest, included two Presbyterian buildings at either end of the street – Great Victoria Street Presbyterian Church at the south end and Church House at the north end – as well as May Street Presbyterian Church near Donegall Square.

Estimates say that 31 Presbyterian churches in Belfast have closed since 1964, so the surviving Presbyterian churches in the inner city are important as landmark buildings and as part of the city’s Victorian architectural legacy.

Fisherwick Presbyterian Church, Malone Road … Gothic architecture only became acceptable for Presbyterian churches in the late 19th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Presbyterians in Ireland were divided between ‘Old Light’ and ‘New Light’ parties in the 18th and early 19th century and by debates, schisms and splits. The Non-Subscribing Presbyterians came together in 1835, and the Synod of Ulster and the Secession Synod came together in 1840, forming the General Assembly with almost 450 congregations and 650,000 members.

The 19th century was a period of expansion for the Presbyterianism in Ireland. Hundreds of new congregations were formed as the population role in the early 1800s and urban centres expanded, boosted by the 1859 Revival.. The Presbyterian population in Belfast quadrupled between 1850 and 1900, and the number of congregations rose from 15 to 47.

Presbyterians in Ireland began to build their own places of worship in the second half of the 17th century, but their early meeting houses were often in less conspicuous rural areas or on the edges of towns.

The early churches were marked by a preference for classicism and a rejection of the Gothic. In Belfast, both the church built on May Street for the Revd Dr Henry Cooke and Great Victoria Street Presbyterian Church illustrate that preference for the classical style in architecture.

Gothic architecture became the preferred style for many new Presbyterian churches built in the second half of the 1800s, and this is reflected in the architecture of Church House and the new or Fisherwick Church built on Malone Road in 1898-1901 to replace the original classical church on Fishwerwick Place that was demolished to make way for Church House.

On the corner of Shaftesbury Square and Donegall Road in Belfast (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Great Victoria Street Presbyterian Church was originally built Sandy Row Presbyterian Church and is also known as South Kirk Presbyterian Church. But technically it is on Shaftesbury Square.

Shaftesbury Square is named after Anthony Ashley-Cooper (1869-1961), 9th Earl of Shaftesbury, who was the Lord Lieutenant of Belfast (1904-1911), Lord Lieutenant of Antrim (1911-1916), Lord Mayor of Belfast (1907) and Chancellor of Queen’s University Belfast (1909-1923).

He was a grandson of Anthony Ashley-Cooper (1801-1885), 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, the evangelical philanthropist and social reformer who campaigned for better working conditions, reform of the lunacy laws, education and the end of child labour. The Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain in Piccadilly Circus, London, known popularly as ‘Eros’, was erected in 1893 to commemorate his philanthropic works.

The Belfast family connections of Lord Shaftesbury who gives his name to Shaftesbury Square came through his mother, Lady Harriet Chichester (1836-1898), daughter of George Chichester, 3rd Marquess of Donegall, while his aunt Lady Victoria Elizabeth Ashley (1837-1927), also married into the Chichester family when she married Harry Chichester (1821-1906), 2nd Baron Templemore.

Lord Shaftesbury inherited the remaining Chichester and Donegall family estates in Belfast, including Belfast Castle, which he presented to the City of Belfast in 1934.

Great Victoria Street Presbyterian Church, described as classical stucco, was built to accommodate 800. It was designed by 'Mr McNea' and opened in January 1861. It was originally known as the Sandy Row Presbyterian Church, and it served a growing population on Sandy Row, which runs parallel to Great Victoria Street. The streets in the area have long been a heartland of Protestant working class life and of loyalist politics.

The church was designed by the Belfast architect, surveyor and developer, James McNea. He was commercially active throughout the 1850s and 1860s, and also designed Presbyterian churches in Stewartstown, Co Tyrone (1851), Hill Street, Lurgan (1861), and Armagh (1866), and Saint John’s Church (Church of Ireland) on Laganbank Road, Belfast (1852).

McNea’s new church opened on 13 January 1861. He designed the church in the classical style, dominated by its decorative stucco work. It could seat a congregation of 800 people.

The schoolhouse at the rear of church was designed by Boyd and Batt and opened in 1868. Improvements and renovations were designed by Young and Mackenzie – who also designed Church House on Fisherwick Place – and were carried out by T&W Lowry in 1909.

When Windsor Presbyterian Church closed in January 2022, the congregation found a new home at Great Victoria Street Presbyterian Church at 34 Shaftesbury Square in February 2022. Windsor Presbyterian Church opened on Lisburn Road in 1887.

In its heyday, Windsor was one of the most fashionable and influential Presbyterian churches in Ireland. Two of its ministers became moderators – the Revd John Irwin (1917) and the Revd William Corkey (1933). But the congregation had to leave over two years ago when it could no longer afford the expensive refurbishment of the 19th century building.

The minister of Great Victoria Street Church, the Revd William Harkness, moved to Belmont Presbyterian Church on Sydenham Avenue last year (2023). Meanwhile, there are plans to develop the former Windsor Presbyterian Church as an arts and drama centre.

The Assembly Buildings or Church House stands on the original site of Fisherwick Place Presbyterian Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

At the other end of Great Victoria Street, the Assembly Buildings or Church House is the headquarters of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. It actually stands on Fisherwick Place, a tiny stretch of street linking Great Victoria Street and College Square.

Church House was built on the corner of Fisherwick Place and Howard Street in 1905 in the Gothic style. The three story building is styled on the architecture of a Scottish baronial castle. Church House is dominated by a 40 metre tower, which is modelled on that of Saint Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh. The bell tower houses Belfast’s only peal of 12 bells.

Church House was opened by the Duke of Argyll at the start of General Assembly week in June 1905. Inside, the oval Assembly Hall with a gallery can seat 1,300 people.

Fisherwick Presbyterian Church originally stood on the site, and Fisherwick Place took its name from Fisherwick Hall, the Staffordshire home near Lichfield of the Chichester family, who held the Donegall titles and who owned much of the land on which Belfast was built.

Church House was designed by Young and Mackenzie and was built in local Scrabo stone by Robert Corry. For almost 80 years the Assembly Buildings served solely entirely as the headquarters and General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. In 1992, however, after its first significant refurbishment, the building found additional commercial uses, with retail facilities on the ground floor and the Main Hall becoming a conference venue. Further refurbishment and redevelopment took place in 2010 and 2017-2018.

The tower at Church House is modelled on the tower of Saint Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Nearby, to the east of Donegall Square, May Street Presbyterian Church was built on May Street in 1829 as the Synod of Ulster Meeting House or the Memorial Church.

It was designed by William Smith and built by John Brown, and is a Palladian example of the Presbyterian taste for the solidly classical. It has a brick and stucco pedimented façade, with a recessed central entrance bay between ‘Scamozzian Ionic’ columns, pilasters arranged in antis, and contrasting patterns of painted stucco architraves and brickwork.

Smith was active from the 1820s into the 1840s. He was also the architect of the Belfast Savings Bank on King Street, also built in 1829, as well as the Lying-In Hospital, Antrim Road (1830), the old Albert Bridge (1834), and the Wesleyan church in Linenhall Street, Derry (1835).

May Street Church, which opened on 18 October 1829, was built specially built for the fiery and controversial evangelical Henry Cooke (1788-1868), who clashed regularly with the liberals among Presbyterians minister, opposed Catholic Emancipation, was a vocal advocate of ‘Protestant unity’ and drove the Non-Subscribing ministers out of the General Assembly.

He remained active as a minister in May Street Church until 1867 and his reputation as a preacher drew large crowds to the church. Cooke died on 13 December 1868.

May Street Presbyterian Church was built in 1829 as the Synod of Ulster Meeting House or the Memorial Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

John Boyd was the architect of the Cooke memorial doorway built at the church in 1872, and a plaque over the entrance was erected in 1879 ‘in recognition’ of Cooke’s ‘eminent and successful labours … against the prevailing errors of the times.’

The church received grants for repairs and refurbishment in 2016. But it faced serious difficulties, and eventually closed in December 2018 due to dwindling numbers and was formally amalgamated with Fisherwick Church on the Malone Road.

The former May Street church is now known as ‘Central,’ a church plant from Carnmoney Church into the city centre of Belfast, which meets in the May Street Presbyterian Church building on Sundays at 11 am.

Cooke’s statue in Belfast, popularly known as ‘Black Man,’ was erected in 1875 in front of Royal Belfast Academical Institution and facing Fisherwick Place Presbyterian Church, later the site of Church House. His statue replaced a statue of Frederick Richard Chichester, Marquess of Donegall and Earl of Belfast, and to this day is often seen an enduring symbol of evangelical Protestantism in Northern Ireland.

The Cooke memorial doorway and a plaque over the entrance recall Cooke’s ‘eminent and successful labours … against the prevailing errors of the times’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

How Fisherwick and the Chichester family gave Lichfield names to the streets of Belfast

Arthur Chichester of Fisherwick, Marquess of Donegall, is remembered in street names and buildings throughout central Belfast (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

As Donegal celebrates its 450th anniversary this year, I wonder whether any connections are being made with Donegal House in Lichfield. But Donegal House in Lichfield and Donegall Square in Belfast take their name not from the town and county in the north-west Ireland but from the family who lived for generations at Fisherwick Hall, 6 km (4 miles) east of Lichfield, and a similar distance north of Comberford and Tamworth.

The street patterns of central Belfast and their names date from the second half of the 18th century, and many of the names are derived directly from Arthur Chichester (1739-1799), 5th Earl of Donegall and later 1st Marquess of Donegal. He owned a quarter of a million acres in Ireland and was the principal landlord of Georgian Belfast. Yet he had his main residence at Fisherwick Hall, near Lichfield, where the gardens were laid out by Capability Brown.

I have had a long-standing interest in the Chichesters of Fishwerwick because Arthur Chichester bought Comberford Hall, including the Manors of Wigginton and Comberford, on 1 August 1789 from Thomas Thynne (1734-1796), Viscount Weymouth – who was about to become the 1st Marquis of Bath – and his son, Thomas Thynne.

Chichester Street, Belfast, is named after the Chichester family of Fisherwick, between Lichfield and Tamworth (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Lord Donegall became the greatest landowner of his day in Ireland. His estates included 11,000 acres at Dunbrody, Co Wexford, almost 90,000 acres in Co Antrim, 160,000 acres in Co Donegal, the whole town of Belfast, and the townland of Ballynafeigh, Co Down, totalling over quarter of a million acres in all.

However, Arthur Chichester chose to live not in Ireland but at Fisherwick Hall near Lichfield. He tore down the Skeffington family’s old Tudor manor house, replacing it with a vast Palladian mansion set in a park of 4,000 acres, all designed and constructed by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown.

He was accused of ‘draining a manufacturing country of £36,000 a year and having raised fines’, paid by tenants to get leases, ‘sufficient to impoverish a province, and transported them out of the kingdom to build palaces in another land, where he is unknown and disregarded.’

Donegal House, Bore Street, Lichfield … takes its name from the Chichester family, Earls of Donegall (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Lord Donegall is said to have rebuilt Comberford Hall, replacing the original half-timbered Tudor manor house dating back to the late 15th century, at the same time as he rebuilt Fisherwick Hall. However, Mrs Valerie Coltman, who lived at Comberford Hall for many years, believed it is more likely that Comberford Hall was rebuilt more than 70 years earlier in 1720.

He also gave his name to Donegal House in Bore Street, Lichfield, although the house was built in 1730 by a local merchant James Robinson.

Within a year of buying Comberford Hall, Lord Donegall had raised £20,000 from the banker Henry Hoare, using the manors and lands of Comberford and Wigginton as security. In 1791, he received additional titles of Marquess of Donegall and Earl of Belfast in the Irish peerage and of Baron Fisherwick of Fisherwick, Staffordshire in the British peerage. The mortgages he raised on Comberford and other Staffordshire properties probably paid the fees and administrative costs involved in receiving these elevated titles.

Arthur Chichester, Earl of Donegall, bought Comberford Hall on 1 August 1789 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Meanwhile, underneath the veneer of aristocratic splendour, domestic life for the Chichester family of Belfast and Fisherwick was in turmoil.

His eldest son, George Augustus Chichester (1769-1844), would eventually inherit the family titles as 2nd Marquess of Donegall and Earl of Donegall and Earl of Belfast. In his youth George was known as Lord Chichester, a courtesy title. At an early age, he developed a gambling addiction. One source says he ‘was licentious and profligate in proportion to his status and fortune.’

Arthur paid his son’s debts several times but eventually allowed him to be sent to the debtors’ prison. While in jail, George was offered financial assistance by Sir (James) Edward May (1751-1814), to secure his release in return for marrying his daughter Anna. May has been described as ‘a moneylender who also ran a gaming house’. He secured Lord Chichester’s release in 1795, and George was now obliged to return the obligation and marry Anna.

Five days before his 26th birthday, George Chichester married 18-year-old Anna May on 8 August 1795. But Anna was an illegitimate child and was also underage. In her circumstances, marriage required the consent of the Lord Chancellor and the permission given by her Welsh guardians was insufficient. Years later, the marriage was declared unlawful.

The Donegall title, with its unusual spelling, is repeated in street names in Belfast (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Anna’s father Edward May, had married Anna’s mother, Eliza Bagg in Saint George’s Church, Holborn, in 1773. But Eliza was already legally married. She was neither divorced nor widowed, and her first husband, a man named Lind, was living in the East Indies. Eliza May was never charged with bigamy, but their children – two sons and two – were deemed illegitimate.

George Chichester succeeded as 2nd Marquess of Donegall when his father died in 1799. He and Anna fled to Belfast in 1802 to escape his debtors once again and brought the May family with them, including Edward and Eliza and their four children.

Edward May became the agent for the Chichester family estates in Belfast. He was MP for Belfast in 1801-1814, was twice Sovereign (Mayor) of Belfast (1803-1806, 1809-1810), and in 1811 he also succeeded to the title of baronet first given to his father in 1763.

As Sir Edward May, he pioneered land reclamation on the edges of Belfast Lough, and gave his name to Edward Street, Great Edward Street, which merged with Victoria Street, May Street, May’s Dock and May’s Market. On his orders, the gravestones and memorials in Saint George’s Churchyard were destroyed or removed in 1806 and large parts of the graveyard were sold off in 1811 for the development of Church Lane and Ann Street.

When May died on 23 July 1814, it emerged that Eliza and Edward had not been legally married and that Eliza was a bigamist. All their children were deemed illegitimate, including their younger son, the Revd Edward May, who had become the Vicar of Saint Anne’s, Belfast, only weeks after his ordination in 1809.

May Street Presbyterian Church, Belfast … May Street is named after Sir Edward May and his family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The elder son, Stephen Edward May, had taken his father’s seat as MP for Belfast in 1814. He also presumed he had succeeded as the third baronet and was styling himself Sir Stephen Edward May. But in the eyes of the law, he had been born out of wedlock and the title was removed from him. Feeling he had been shamed publicly, he resigned as MP and the title reverted to his uncle, Sir Humphrey May, as the third baronet.

The revelations about the May bigamy also meant that Anna May, Lady Donegall, was illegitimate. In addition, she had been underage when she married, and it emerged in 1815 that under the terms of legislation in 1753 her marriage was invalid. Not only was she under-age when she married, but the marriage was under special licence without calling banns, and her marriage had not received the consent of the Lord Chancellor.

The couple’s adult children now faced being cut out of the succession to the Chichester family titles and estates in Ireland and in England and being disinherited. The eldest son, who had been using the courtesy title of Earl of Belfast, became plain Mr George Chichester.

Lord Belfast failed in his efforts to sort out his legal position in the consistory court and in chancery, and the Lord Chancellor referred the case to the House of Lords in 1821. The case was not heard, but a Marriage Act amendment bill in 1822 retrospectively legalised past formal breaches of the marriage laws, and finally Lord Belfast’s legitimacy was resolved 27 years after his parents’ irregular and forced marriage.

Celebratory dinners were held in Belfast and other places in August and September. On 8 December 1822, he married Lady Harriet Butler (1799-1860), a daughter of Richard Butler (1775-1819), 1st Earl of Glengall. She had been partly brought up by the Empress Josephine in France, she had a fiery temper and the couple were known as ‘Bel and the Dragon’.

Lord Belfast came to a new, but ultimately disastrous, financial arrangement with his father, and the Chichester properties in Belfast were sold in a vain attempt to ward off mounting debts.

His father, the 2nd Marquess of Donegall, died in 1844, aged 75, and Lord Belfast succeeded as the 3rd Marquess of Donegall. But by then, the debts of father and son had mounted to over £400,000 – the equivalent of about £64 million today. He had already lost control of almost all his property and influence in Belfast, and now saw the town sold off forcibly through the encumbered estates court in 1850. He died in October 1883. Both his sons had died before him, and his titles and remaining estates passed to his brother, Lord Edward Chichester (1799-1889), Dean of Raphoe.

Church House on Fisherwick Place … Fisherwick Place takes its name from Fisherwick, between Lichfield and Tamworth (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Meanwhile, when the 1st Marquess of Donegall died in 1799, Comberford Hall and his other Staffordshire estates, including Fisherwick, again heavily mortgaged, passed to a younger son, Lord Spencer Stanley Chichester (1775-1819). He also inherited Dunbrody Abbey, Co Wexford, with a townhouse in Saint James’s Square, London, 20,000 acres on the Inishowen Peninsula in Co Donegal, the townland of Ballymacarrett, Co Down, the lands through which the Lagan Canal passed … and the family’s Gainsborough portraits.

But Spencer Chichester’s gambling debts also caught up with him. In 1801, he sold some of his lands in Lichfield, Alrewas, Whittington, Wichnor, Comberford, Coton, Tamworth and Hopwas, including two public houses and various burgage tenements in Lichfield, to the Lane family of King’s Bromley.

By January 1805, Spencer Chichester was seeking legal opinion on his title to the Manor of Comberford and Wigginton. Eventually, he was forced to sell Fisherwick, where the great house was demolished. This branch of the Chichester family, crippled by the gambling debts of profligate sons, found it impossible to pay off their loans, and were forced to sell Comberford Hall and the manorial rights and lands that went with it.

Lord Spencer Chichester’s son, Arthur Chichester, was given the title of Baron Templemore in 1831, and his branch of the family eventually inherited the Donegall titles.

A collection of Arthur Street names in Belfast (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Athur Chichester of Fisherwick, Marquis of Donegall, and many of his family members are remembered to this day in street names throughout the city centre in Belfast.

Arthur Street, Arthur Place, Arthur Lane, Arthur Square and Upper Arthur Street take their name from Arthur Chichester.

Chichester Street leads from Donegall Square east to Victoria Street, and then onto Oxford Street. Chichester Avenue, Chichester Close, Chichester Court, Chichester Gardens, Chichester Park and Chichester Road are off Antrim Road.

Fisherwick Presbyterian Church … moved from Fisherwick Place to Malone Road in 1901 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Fisherwick Place takes its name from Fisherwick Hall near Lichfield. It is a small street running from Great Victoria Street to College Square, and the corner with Howard Street is dominated by Church House, the headquarters of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.

Church House stands on the site of Fisherwick Place Presbyterian Church, which was founded in 1823. When Church House was built on the site, the church moved to a site on Malone Road, and the new church opened as Fisherwick Presbyterian Church in 1901.

Marquis Street was originally known as Ferguson’s Lane after the family of Sir Samuel Ferguson, the Belfast-born lawyer and poet. Its name was changed in deference to the Marquis of Donegall.

Donegall Square and City Hall in the heart of Belfast (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The name Donegall appears in several places in Belfast, including Donegall Square, Donegall Road, Donegall Place, Donegall Gardens, Donegall Lane and Donegall Parade.

But it is worth noting tha the spelling of the name throughout Belfast is with two Ls, the way the Chichester family spelt it in their titles since the 17th century.

When the first Marquess of Donegall built a new church in Belfast, he named its Saint Anne’s Church in honour of his first wife, Lady Anne Hamilton, daughter of the Duke of Hamilton, whom he married in 1761. It has since been replaced by Saint Anne’s Cathedral.

Charlotte Street and Little Charlotte Street off Donegall Pass (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Charlotte Street and Little Charlotte Street, in a loyalist heartland off Donegall Pass, are named after either his eldest daughter, Lady Charlotte Anne Chichester, who was born in 1762 and died in infancy, or his second wife, the widowed Charlotte (née Spencer) Moore. They were married on 24 October 1788, she had no children and she died less than a year after their marriage, on 19 September 1789.

The name of My Lady’s Road near Ormeau Road is intriguing. When the 2nd Marquis of Donegall went to live at Ormeau House about 1807, the former Anna May did not appreciate the journey along a row of dilapidated cottages with broken windows. A special way was made for Lady Donegall and became known as My Lady’s Road. Ormeau Avenue and Ormeau Road take their name from Ormeau House.

Templemore Avenue, Close, Park, Place and Street and the Templemore Baths in East Belfast take their name from the title held by Lord Spencer Chichester’s descendants. But during last weekend’s visit, I never managed to visit Lichfield Avenue, off Bloomfield Road in East Belfast.

Arthur Square in Belfast city centre … the streets off it include Ann Street, Arthur Street, Castle Lane, Cornmarket and William Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

How four generations of the Skeffington family of Fisherwick owned and lost Comberford Hall

Comberford Hall … passed to four generations of the Skeffington family of Fisherwick for half a century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I was discussing earlier this week how the Skeffington family of Fisherwick, near Lichfield, had intermarried with the Skeffington family of Leicester, and how they were a powerful political family in Leicestershire and Staffordshire from the late 16th century into the mid-17th century see 17 June 2024 HERE).

Sir William Skeffington of Fisherwick was High Sheriff of Staffordshire in 1601 and again in 1623 in succession to his uncle, William Comberford (1551-1625) of Comberford Hall and the Moat House on Lichfield Street, Tamworth. William Comberford was married to William Skeffington’s aunt, Mary Skeffington, and their grandson was Robert Comberford (1594-1671) of Comberford Hall.

Robert Comberford was a second cousin of two Skeffington brothers who played political roles in Staffordshire during the English Civil War: Sir John Skeffington (1584-1651), was a royalist colonel and had been MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme and was High Sheriff of Staffordshire in 1637; Sir Richard Skeffington (1590-1647) was a Parliamentarian and was MP for Tamworth in 1625 and for Staffordshire in 1646-1647. Both brothers were baptised in Saint Michael’s Church, Lichfield.

After Robert Comberford died in 1669, his kinsman, Francis Comberford, the Quaker former magistrate of Bradley, tried but failed to claim Comberford Hall and the Comberford estate. Robert’s widow, Catherine (née Bates), continued to live at Comberford Hall for almost 50 years with her daughter Anne and grandson Comberford Brooke, until she died in 1718.

But the Comberford estates were heavily indebted and mortgaged, and the title to them appears to have passed to Sir Richard Skeffington’s son, Sir John Skeffington (1632-1695), who owned the neighbouring estate of Fisheriwck.

Fisherwick Hall was about 6 km (4 miles) east of Lichfield, between Whittington and Elford and immediately north of Comberford

Fisherwick Hall was about 6 km (4 miles) east of Lichfield, between Whittington and Elford and immediately north of Comberford. Fisherwick was in Saint Michael’s Parish, Lichfield, and many members of the Skeffington family of Fisherwick were baptised, married and buried at Saint Michael’s Church – the same church where the parents of Samuel Johnson were buried later.

Although Comberford Hall passed to the Skeffington family of neighbouring Fisherwick, whose members later held the title of Lord Masserene, the descendants of the Comberford and Brooke family continued to live at Comberford Hall into the early 18th century. When the Privy Council ordered a return by the parish clergy of Papists and reported Papists in 1706 , ‘with their respective qualities, estates and places of abode,’ 55 were counted in Tamworth, including Mrs Comberford of Comberford, with her three grandchildren and three servants.

This Mrs Comberford was Robert Comberford’s widow Catherine, and she and her family continued living at Comberford Hall as tenants of the Skeffington family until the mid-18th century, unable over the space of half a century to redeem the mortgages raised on the Comberford estates.

The Moat House Tamworth … Richard Skeffington, a second cousin of Robert Comberford, was MP for Tamworth in 1625 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Four successive generations and members of the Skeffington family owned Comberford Hall from the late 17th century until they too were forced to sell it in 1755.

Sir Richard Skeffington (1597-1647) of Fisherwick was educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and was knighted in 1624. He was MP for Tamworth in 1625 and for Staffordshire in 1646-1647. When he died on 2 June 1647, he was buried at Broxbourne, Hertfordshire.

1, Sir John Skeffington (1632-1695), 2nd Viscount Massereene, 4th Baronet, Sir Richard’s son, was the first member of his family to own Comberford Hall. He was born in Lichfield, but spent most of his life in Ireland in a political and military career. His strong Presbyterian views made him one of the leading Presbyterians in Ireland at the time, but were at odds with the High Anglicanism and Catholic sympathies of the Comberford family.

John Skeffington was born in Lichfield in December 1632 and was baptised in Saint Michael’s Church, Lichfield, on 27 December 1632. His father was a Parliamentarian or Cromwellian, and John identified as a Presbyterian from an early age.

He was educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where his tutor was Samuel Morland and his fellow students included Samuel Pepys. He was 19 when he succeeded his cousin, Sir William Skeffington, as the fourth baronet in April 1652 and inherited the Skeffington estates at Fisherwick, near Lichfield. Two years later, in 1654, he married Mary Clotworthy, the eldest daughter of John Clotworthy, 1st Viscount Massereene and 1st Baron Lough Neagh.

Massereene is a small townland on the shores of Lough Neagh, just outside Antrim town. The peculiar conditions in which the Massereene title was created made John the heir to his father-in-law and the name Clotworthy became a first or given name in successive generations of the Skeffington family.

John Skeffington eventually inherited that title as 2nd Viscount Massereene and 2nd Baron Lough Neagh on 23 September 1665. Meanwhile, he had become a key figure in political and military life in Ireland. He was the MP for Down, Antrim, and Armagh in the Third Protectorate Parliament in 1659. He was made the captain of a troop of militia in Co Antrim in 1660. He was elected as the MP for Co Antrim in the re-established Irish House of Commons from 1661 until he succeeded to his father-in-law’s title and estates in 1665, when he took a seat in the Irish House of Lords.

He was a justice of the peace in Antrim, but he continued to hold the strong Puritan views he held during the Cromwellian period. He was described in the early 1660s as ‘a rigid Presbyterian … his whole alliance Presbyterian,’ and he was removed from as a justice of the peace in 1663 in the aftermath of Colonel Thomas Blood’s foiled plot to install a Presbyterian administration in Ireland.

Despite this, Skeffington was appointed Custos Rotulorum of Derry in 1666, a member of the Irish Privy Council in 1667 and Governor of Derry in 1678. Skeffington was appointed Captain of Lough Neagh in 1680, in part owing to his expenditure in improving the fortifications at Antrim Castle.

Skeffington’s Presbyterian views were also a factor in managing his estates in Staffordshire, and William Palmer’s house in Fisherwick was licensed for Presbyterian teaching in 1672. Skeffington was zealous in his pursuit and persecution of Roman Catholic priests in Ireland, and in 1681 he alleged that many soldiers in the Irish army were either Catholics or married to Catholics.

In the aftermath of the Rye House Plot in 1683, Skeffington came under pressure from the Duke of Ormond to conform to the Church of Ireland, but he refused. James II excluded Skeffington from the Irish Privy Council upon his accession in 1685. Three days after the outbreak of the Williamite War in Ireland, on 15 March 1689, Skeffington fled his home at Antrim Castle home. The castle was captured the following day by Jacobite forces who looted £3,000 worth of his possessions.

After time in Derry and Scotland, he was in London by September 1689 where he was one of a committee chosen by Irish Protestant exiles to represent their concerns to the English Williamite government. He was attainted by James II’s brief Patriot Parliament in Dublin in 1689. Skeffington returned to Ireland following the war, and was readmitted to the Irish Privy Council by William III in 1692.

Meanwhile, Presbyterians continued to find support on the Skeffigton estate in Staffordshire, and in 1693 Fisherwick Hall was included in a list of houses licensed for dissenting worship.

When Skeffigton died on 21 June 1695, he was buried at Antrim. He was succeeded in his title and his estates by his son, Clotworthy Skeffington (1661-1714), 3rd Viscount Massereene.

A canopied Victorian Gothic Skeffington and Massereene monument in All Saints’ Church, Antrim (Photograh: Patrick Comerford)

2, Clotworthy Skeffington (1661-1714), 3rd Viscount Massereene, was the second generation of the Skeffington family to own Comberford Hall was born in Antrim in 1661, and was admitted to Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1679.

Clotworthy Skeffington shared his father’s religious and political outlooks. During the Williamite wars in Ireland, he joined the Earl of Mount Alexander’s Protestant militia in 1688 and received a commission as a colonel from William III in January 1689. He took part in the defence of Derry during the Siege of Derry from April to August 1689. Like his father, he too was attainted by James II’s Patriot Parliament in Dublin in 1689.

After the Williamite wars, Skeffington was MP for Co Antrim in the Irish House of Commons in 1692-1693. When he inherited his father’s peerage in 1695, he took his seat in the Irish House of Lords. He was appointed Governor of Derry in 1699.

He continued to support nonconformist and dissenting views on his estate in Staffordshire, and Robert Travers, the Presbyterian minister for the Lichfield area, baptised a child at Fisherwick in 1701.

Clotworthy Skeffington married Rachel Hungerford in 1680, and they were the parents of one son and three daughters. He died in Antrim in March 1714 and was succeeded by his son, Clotworthy Skeffington, who became 4th Viscount Massereene and inherited Fisherwick Hall and Comberford Hall, as well as a vast estate in Ireland centred on Antrim Castle.

The monument to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) by the West Door of Lichfield Cathedral … she jilted Clotworthy Skeffington in 1712 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

3, Clotworthy Skeffington, 4th Viscount Massereene, was the third generation in his branch of the Skeffington family to hold Fisherwick Hall and Comberford Hall when he succeeded his father in 1714. He is often remembered as the rejected suitor of Mary Pierrepoint, later Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), who instead married Sir Edward Wortley Montagu in 1712.

A year later, on 9 September 1713, the jilted Skeffington married Lady Catherine Chichester, a daughter of Arthur Chichester (1666-1706), 3rd Earl of Donegall, and they were the parents of seven children. The Chichester family gave their name to Donegal House in Lichfield, and her nephew, Arthur Chichester (1739-1799), 4th Earl of Donegall and 1st Marquess of Donegall, later acquired Comberford Hall and other parts of the former Skeffington estates in Staffordshire.

Skeffington’s main political and financial interests, however, were in Ireland. He sat in the Irish House of Commons as the MP for Co Antrim from 1703 until he succeeded to his father’s title and took his seat in the Irish House of Lords in 1714.

Meanwhile, Catherine Comberford, who had continued to live at Comberford Hall as a tenant of the Skeffingtons of Fisherwick, died in 1718. Comberford Hall then passed to the Skeffington family, although they never lived at either Fisherwick Hall or Comberford Hall, and continued to live mainly at Antrim Castle.

Clotworthy Skeffington died on 11 February 1738, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Clotworthy Skeffington (1715-1757), who inherited the family titles and estates and who was made Earl of Massereene in 1756.

A portrait of Clotworthy Skeffington (1715-1757), 5th Viscount Massereene and 1st Earl of Massereene (ca 1751 by Arthur Pond) … he was forced to sell his Staffordshire estates, including Fisherwick Hall and Comberford Hall

4, Clotworthy Skeffington (1715-1757), 1st Earl of Massereene and 5th Viscount Massereene, succeeded to his father’s titles in 1738 and took his seat in the Irish House of Lords. He was the fourth and final generation in his branch of the Skeffington family to hold Fisherwick Hall and Comberford Hall in Staffordshire.

He became a Member of the Irish Privy Council in 1746, and and in 1751 he was created a Doctor of Law by the University of Dublin (Trinity College Dublin). He was given a more senior ranking in the Irish peerage on 28 July 1756 as Earl of Massereene. By then, however, he had been forced to sell his estates near Lichfield, including Fisherwick and Comberford, perhaps to pay the debts of his wayward, gambling son, Clotworthy Skeffington.

Massereene married his first wife Anne Daniel on 16 March 1738. She died two years later; he married his second wife Anne Eyre from Derbyshire on 25 November 1741, and they were the parents of six children. A year after receiving his new peerage title in Ireland, he was killed in Antrim while he was out ‘fowling’ on 14 September 1757.

Capability Brown’s landscape at Fisherwick Hall, a painting by John Spyers (1786) … Fisherwick Hall was inherited along with Comberford Hall by the Chichester family, but was demolished in 1805

Fisherwick Hall and Comberford Hall had descended with the title of Viscount Masserene, until 1755 when the 5th Viscount Masserene sold his mortgaged estates – perhaps to pay the debts of his gambling son, Clotworthy Skeffington – to Samuel Swinfen of Swinfen Hall, in Weeford, near Lichfield, as the trustee of his neighbour Samuel Hill of Shenstone Park, who built Swinfen Hall in 1757.

After Hill died on 21 February 1758, Comberford and Fisherwick, along with the Tatton Park estate, were inherited by his nephew, Samuel Egerton (1711-1780). By then, Egerton had embarked on his grand rebuilding of Tatton Park in Cheshire, with its neoclassical façade and exuberant rococo interiors, and in 1759 he sold his Comberford and Fisherwick estates back to their former trustee, Samuel Swinfen.

Samuel Swinfen sold the estates once again in 1761, this time to Thomas Thynne, 3rd Viscount Weymouth (1734-1796), a descendant of the Duchess of Somerset, who was a beneficiary under William Comberford’s will. In 1756, Comberford Common was enclosed under an Act of Parliament.

On 1 August 1789, Viscount Weymouth – who was about to become the 1st Marquis of Bath – and his son, the Hon Thomas Thynne, sold the Manors of Comberford and Wigginton, including lands in Hopwas and Coton, to Arthur Chichester (1739-1799), 5th Earl of Donegall, a nephew of Lady Catherine Chichester who had married Clotworthy Skeffington, 4th Viscount Massereene, in 1713.

Within a year, Lord Donegall had raised £20,000 from the banker Henry Hoare, using the Manors and Lands of Comberford and Wigginton as collateral security. Eventually, the Chichester family, crippled by the gambling debts of a profligate son, would find it impossible to pay off this loan, and would be forced to sell Comberford Hall and the manorial rights and lands that went with it.

Clotworthy Skeffington (1742-1805), the wayward and gambling son who appears to have forced the sale of Fisherwick Hall and Comberford Hall in 1755, spent almost 20 years in prison in France

As for Clotworthy Skeffington (1742-1805), the wayward and gambling son who appears to have forced the sale of Fisherwick Hall and Comberford Hall in 1755, he spent almost 20 years in prison in France, and only escaped in during the French Revolution in 1789, the year his father’s first cousin, Arthur Chichester (1739-1799), 5th Earl of Donegall, had bought the former Skeffington estates in Staffordshire.

This Clotworthy Skeffington was born on 28 January 1742, and he was styled Lord Loughneagh from 1756 until 1757, when he inherited his father’s titles as 2nd Earl of Massereene and 6th Viscount Massereene, and his estates in Co Antrim, although the Skeffington estates in Staffordshire had been sold off in 1755.

As a young peer, he entered Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in 1758. In his early days, it was said, he was a gambling dandy who ‘figured very considerably in the walks of fashion,’ and that he was vain, conceited and disagreeable.

Through his gambling and his speculation in salt imports from Syria or the Barbary Coast, he accumulated large debts in France of between 15,000 and 20,000 French livre. He was imprisoned in For-l’Évêque in Paris in 1769 for his debts. He maintained a lavish lifestyle in prison, employing a private chef and entertaining fellow prisoners and visiting prostitutes. In his first seven years in jail, his debts had risen to 1 million livres, and were growing by the day. He attempted to escape in June 1770, but his plan was foiled was those he owed fortunes to.

When For-l’Évêque was closed in 1780, Skeffington was transferred to La Force Prison. This second prison is known in literature for its fictional detainees, including Charles Darnay in Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, Lucien de Rubempré and Jacques Collins in Honoré de Balzac’s Illusions perdues and Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes, Thénardier in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, and Benedetto in Alexander Dumas’s The Count of Monte-Cristo.

There, Skeffington’s debts continued to mount, rising to 3 million livres. He was freed with other prisoners by a mob on 13 July 1789, a day before the storming of the Bastille. He fled to England with Marie Anne Barcier, the 27-year-old daughter of the Governor of For-l’Évêque or Châtelet prison in Paris, and they were married in Saint Peter’s Cornhill, London, on 19 August 1789 – although some accounts say they had already been secretly married in Paris before that date in a ceremony of dubious legality.

From England, the couple made their way back to the Skeffington family seat at Antrim Castle. But his eccentric and erratic behaviour escalated and proved to be too challenging. The woman known as ‘the beautiful countess’ returned to France and died at the age of 38 in October 1800.

Skeffington married a second wife, Elizabeth Lane, also known as Mrs Blackburn, and said to have been a 19-year-old English chambermaid. When he died at Antrim Castle on 28 February 1805 he had no children. His widow married twice again, to George Doran and then to the Hon Hugh Massy, and died on 19 March 1838. The titles and the remaining estates passed to Clotworthy Skeffington’s younger brother Henry Skeffington, as the third earl, and then to youngest brother, Chichester Skeffington, as the fourth early.

The title of Earl of Massereene and the Skeffington title of baronet died out with the death of the fourth earl in 1816, while the tiles of Baron of Loughneagh and Viscount Massereene were inherited in another, distantly related family.

As for Antrim Castle, it was gutted by fire in 1922 and was finally demolished in the 1970s.

Antrim Castle was gutted by fire in 1922 and was finally demolished in the 1970s

Skeffington House in Leicester recalls family feuds, Comberford links and a lost Lichfield estate

Skeffington House, the only surviving Elizabethan urban gentry house in Leicester … built by Thomas Skeffington in 1560-1583 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

During my visits to Leicester last month, I went twice to see Skeffington House, the only surviving Elizabethan urban gentry house in Leicestershire. It was built between 1560 and 1583 by Thomas Skeffington (1550-1600), who was MP for Leicestershire in 1593 and the Sheriff of Leicestershire on four occasions: 1576-1577, 1588-1589, 1596 and 1599-1600.

The survival of Skeffington House in Leicester over the past 450 or more years was a reminder of the close connections that once linked the Skeffington family and the Comberford family in Staffordshire, and of how the Skeffington family of Fisherwick were once – albeit briefly – a powerful political family in Lichfield and Tamworth in the 17th century.

The Skeffington family took their name from Skeffington, a village 15 km (10 miles) east of Leicester, where they lived from the mid-13th century. In the early 16th century, Sir William Skeffington was the Lord Deputy of Ireland during the reign of Henry VIII. It was he who battered down the walls of Maynooth Castle with cannon, and he devised a contraption of torture known as the ‘Skevington maiden.’ When he died in Kilmainham in 1534, he was buried in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.

Fisherwick Hall, the long lost home of the Skeffington family near Lichfield

His son, Sir John Skeffington, was the founder of the Staffordshire branch of the family. This John Skeffington was a London alderman and wool merchant. He was the Sheriff of London in 1521, and in that same year he bought the Manor of Fisherwick, about 6 km (4 miles) east of Lichfield, between Whittington and Elford and immediately north of Comberford. Fisherwick was in Saint Michael’s Parish, Lichfield, and many members of the Skeffington family of Fisherwick were baptised, married and buried at Saint Michael’s Church – the same church where the parents of Samuel Johnson were buried later.

John Skeffington married Elizabeth Pecke, and Fisherwick was inherited by their son, Sir William Skeffington of Fisherwick. This William married Isa or Joan (Elizabeth) Leveson, a daughter of James Leveson of Liilleshall, Shropshire, and Trentham, Staffordshire. When Sir William died in 1637, he too was buried at Saint Michael’s Church, Lichfield.

William Skeffington’s daughter Mary married her neighbour, William Comberford (1551-1625) of Comberford Hall and the Moat House, Tamworth, in 1567, probably in Saint Michael’s Church, Lichfield, while his son Sir John Skeffington (1534-1604) inherited Fisherwick.

Comberford Hall … Mary Skeffington married Thomas Comberford of Comberford Hall and the Moat House, Tamworth, in 1567 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Mary Comberford’s brother Sir John Skeffington was educated at Queens’ College, Cambridge, and was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1556. He married Alice Cave, daughter of Sir Thomas Cave, and when he died on 7 November 1604 he too was buried at Saint Michael’s Church, Lichfield.

Sir John Skeffington’s son and Mary Comberford’s nephew, Sir William Skeffington of Fisherwick, was a prominent figure in Staffordshire life. Sir William Skeffington was twice Sheriff of Staffordshire, in 1601 and again in 1623, when he succeeded his uncle by marriage, William Comberford, and he was given the title of baronet in 1627. He married Elizabeth Dering and died on 13 September 1635. He was buried on 16 September 1635.

Sir William Skeffington’s two sons found themselves on opposing sides in the English Civil War: Sir John Skeffington (1584-1651), who inherited Fisherwick and the family title as the second baronet, was a faint-hearted royalist, while his younger brother, Sir Richard Skeffington (1590-1647), was an MP for Tamworth in 1627 and later an MP for Staffordshire in the Long Parliament of 1646.

The Moat House, Tamworth … Sir Richard Skeffington, MP for Tamworth, was a grandson of Mary Comberford’s brother (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

The elder son, Sir John Skeffington, spent more than two years at the Middle Temple, but may not have been a diligent student: he was twice fined for missing readings and once for being absent at Christmas. Sir John became entangled in the affairs of the Skeffington family in Leicester when he married his distant cousin Ursula (or Cicely) Skeffington, one of the four daughters of Thomas Skeffington who built Skeffington House in Leicester.

At the time of their marriage, the Leicestershire branch of the Skeffington family was threatened with extinction. Ursula’s father had died in 1605, leaving his estates between his two sons, Sir William Skeffington and John Skeffington. The elder brother William was in an unhappy childless marriage, and shortly after he died in 1605 his widow, Lady Katherine Skeffington, married her groom, Michael Bray.

John Skeffington resented his widowed sister-in-law marrying the groom. The family arguments ended up in court of Westminster in 1613 and a settlement seemed near when the case was adjourned. During the adjournment, John Skeffington and Michael Bray ran into each other in the Hoop Tavern in 1613. They fought and brawled, swords were drawn, and each man ran his sword through the other at the same time, murdering each other in one swift moment.

The Skeffington estates in Leicestershire, Warwickshire and Lincolnshire, said to be worth £1,500 a year, were now divided between the four surviving sisters of William and John: Mary, Catherine, Elizabeth and Ursula. The youngest sister, Ursula, became engaged to a man named Palmer, but she returned his ring and instead married her distant cousin, Sir John Skeffington of Fisherwick, a grandson of Mary Comberford’s brother.

Sir John Skeffington moved to Leicestershire, and when he was knighted in 1624 he was described as living at Skeffington. However, his bride did not make him especially wealthy, as the twice widowed Katherine Bray continued to draw an income from her first husband’s Leicestershire estates.

It seems, though, that John Skeffington exaggerated his poverty. For example, he claimed in 1623 that he was unable to provide a light horse for the militia because he was living on less than £100 a year. Yet in 1627 he told Chancery that his estate was worth around £300 a year.

Skeffington was knighted in 1624 and in 1626 he was elected MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme – a constituency represented almost 200 years earlier by William Comberford in 1442. Skeffington was elected with the support of his brother-in-law Sir William Bowyer and of the Lord Lieutenant of Staffordshire, the 3rd Earl of Essex, who may also have been responsible for the election of Skeffington’s brother, Sir Richard, as MP for Tamworth the previous year.

Saint Mary’s Church, Lichfield … Sir John Skeffington was involved in the legislation to make Saint Mary’s a parish church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

As one of the MPs for Staffordshire, Sir John Skeffington was involved in the legislation to annex Freeford prebend to the vicarage of Saint Mary’s in Lichfield and make Saint Mary’s a parish church. But he seems to have become disillusioned with Parliament, and in a letter he described the House of Commons as a place ‘to please none, to displease all and bear all his own charges’.

George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, may have been involved in securing the title of baronet for Skeffington’s father in 1627, a title John Skeffington would eventually inherit himself.

Sir John Skeffington inherited his father’s title and his estates in Staffordshire in 1635. He returned to live at Fisherwick, and was appointed Sheriff of Staffordshire in 1637, although his enthusiasm for this office seems to have waned. His portion of the family’s Leicestershire estate increased when one of his sisters-in-law, Elizabeth Jeter, died childless in 1637. By the early 1650s, he was able to put the income from his wife’s estate at £700 a year, out of which £140 continued to be paid to Lady Katherine Bray.

When the English Civil War broke out, he initially supported the king, agreeing to contribute six horsemen to the royalist army. However, by October 1642 he was beginning to have second thoughts and he was negotiating with his Roundhead brother, Sir Richard, to defect. Sir Richard Skeffington (1597-1647) was educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and was knighted in 1624. He was MP for Tamworth in 1625 and for Staffordshire in 1646-1647. When he died on 2 June 1647, he was buried at Broxbourne, Hertfordshire.

In the event, John Skeffington never switched sides. The parliamentarians sequestered his estates, and in March 1650 he was allowed to compound for his Staffordshire properties at a sixth of their value. In July 1651, his fine was fixed at £1,616 18s 8d, but there is no evidence he ever paid that sum.

Generations of the Skeffington family were married and buried at Saint Michael’s Church, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Sir John Skeffington died in November 1651 and was buried on 20 November in Skeffington, Leicestershire, rather than in Saint Michael’s, Lichfield. Despite his behaviour and fines as a student, his funeral monument says was learned and was skilled in English, Latin, Greek, French, Italian and Spanish. Towards the end of his life, Skeffington translated El Héroe (1637), by the Spanish Jesuit Baltasar Gracián Morales, which was published after his death with a preface by Izaak Walton.

Sir John Skeffington’s son, Sir William Skeffington, who succeeded as the third baronet and inherited the estate at Fisherwick, died unmarried in April 1652. The title of baronet then passed first to the son of Sir Richard Skeffington of Tamworth, Sir John Skeffington (1632-1695), who was elected to Richard Cromwell’s 1659 Parliament for counties Antrim, Down and Armagh. He later inherited the title of Viscount Massereene through his father-in-law and died in 1695.

His descendants acquired Comberford Hall in the decades that followed, although the descendants of the Comberford family seem to have continued to lived there as tenants of the Skeffington family until the mid-18th century, when they found themselves unable to redeem the mortgages once raised on the Comberford estates.

Capability Brown’s landscape at Fisherwick Hall, a painting by John Spyers (1786) … Fisherwick Hall was inherited along with Comberford Hall by the Chichester family, but was demolished in 1805

Fisherwick Hall, in time, passed from the Skeffington family to the Chichester family, later Earls and Marquesses of Donegall, who also acquired neighbouring Comberford Hall, acquiring the ancestral homes of both the Comberford and the Skeffington families between Lichfield and Tamworth.

Like neighbouring Fisherwick Hall, Comberford Hall descended with the title of Viscount Massereene, until 1755, when Clotworthy Skeffington, 5th Viscount Massereene, sold his mortgaged estates – perhaps to pay the debts of his gambling son, Clotworthy Skeffington – to Samuel Swinfen of Swinfen Hall, in Weeford, near Lichfield, as the trustee of his neighbour Samuel Hill of Shenstone Park.

When Comberford and Fisherwick passed to Hill’s nephew, Samuel Egerton (1711-1780), he told them to their former trustee, Samuel Swinfen. The estate were later sold to Thomas Thynne (1734-1796), 3rd Viscount Weymouth and 1st Marquis of Bath, and then to Arthur Chichester (1739-1799), 5th Earl of Donegall, who rebuilt Fisherwick Hall in 1766-1774 to designs by Capability Brown.

Eventually, the Chichester family, crippled by the gambling debts of a profligate son, was forced to sell Fisherwick Hall and Comberford Hall. Fisherwick Hall was demolished by the Howard family in 1805, although some of its ruins may still be seen. But the Fisherwick name survives in street names in parts of Belfast once owned by the Chichester family.

Skeffington House, Leicester … a reminder of jealousy, feuds and links with Lichfield and the Comberford family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)